A checklist for brand owners to evaluate whether a Meta Ads audit they've been handed is actually thorough.
Every agency sells a "Meta Ads audit" on their discovery calls. 80% of them are fluff. Here's how to QA one.
Structural checks
Did they cover:
- Campaign objective alignment with business goals?
- Ad set structure (how many, how exclusive?)
- Budget distribution across account
- Audience overlap between ad sets
- Creative refresh cadence
Data checks
Did they actually pull numbers?
- Last 90 days, not a random week
- Segmented by campaign, ad set, and placement
- Broken down by demographic
- Compared against industry benchmarks for your vertical
Pixel and tracking
- Is CAPI enabled? (If no: audit is worthless)
- Are conversion events deduplicated?
- Is Aggregated Event Measurement configured for iOS?
- Are UTMs structured consistently?
Creative review
- At least 3 recommendations with visual mockups
- Specific hook suggestions for top 3 weakest ads
- Identified winning patterns you should scale
Reporting quality
- Does it name specific issues and quantify impact?
- Does it prioritise fixes by effort × impact?
- Does it have a 30/60/90 day action plan?
Red flags
- Generic advice ("test more audiences")
- No mention of CAPI or iOS 14
- Recommends detailed interest targeting (outdated)
- Suggests broad Advantage+ without any testing rationale
Green flags
- Specific account-level issues named
- Hypotheses with expected ROAS lift ranges
- Acknowledges what's already working
- Tells you what NOT to change
The 15-minute test
Ask the auditor: "What's the single biggest lever I should pull this month?" If they can't answer in 60 seconds with a specific action and expected outcome, the audit was surface-level.
Final
A real audit takes 8-12 hours of analyst time. If someone charges under USD 500 for one, they're handing you a template.